Chevin FleetWave

Pros

Solid set of core features.
Automatically synchronizes with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) data.
Wealth of available reports.

Cons

Vague pricing structure.
Customizing the solution is more difficult than with competitors.
Lacks map functionality.

Bottom Line

Fleet management software Chevin FleetWave has just about everything you'd need to better understand and manage your fleet.
Other vendors are more easily able to tell you how much their products' cost, however.

1 Sep 2018

Chevin FleetWave (which is priced on an individual basis by Chevin Fleet Solutions so call them for exact pricing) is a solid fleet management software solution. It lets you keep track of all the vehicles in your fleet and the drivers who work for you. You can also monitor important data such as fuel costs, maintenance, and accident history so you can keep things running efficiently and on budget, as well as make better decisions when managing your vehicles. Chevin FleetWave isn't the slickest-looking product of its kind as that would probably be competitors Onfleet and Zubie. In fact, Chevin FleetWave has a slightly dated-looking user interface (UI), but it still does everything you would want a fleet management system to do.

We tested "CORE," the package focused on small businesses. However, the heart and soul of Chevin FleetWave is still geared toward enterprises, so small to midsize businesses (SMBs) may want to consider Editors' Choice pick Fleetio for their needs instead. If you're a larger company, however, then you'll likely appreciate Chevin Fleet Solutions' more customized approach with its software.

Pricing

Pricing for Chevin FleetWave is harder to slice than clearer-cut solutions such as Zubie. You can work with a company sales representative who can figure out a pricing plan based on your fleet size and the features for which you are looking. The CORE package offers a preconfigured set of features such as an asset registry, maintenance tracking, fuel logs, and accident history modules. If you are an SMB, then this will likely be the package you should consider. Additional features are brought on at an extra cost, which you can work out with the company's sales team.

If you're willing to spend the money, then the company can even develop custom features for you. It's hard to give a price range because price is so dependent on the individual customer. However, a one-time cost for a perpetual license can cost as much as $339,500 for enterprises with very large fleets, according to the company.

If you're feeling a sense of sticker shock, then it's important to see Chevin FleetWave in context. This software is designed for large fleets, not smaller companies with just a handful of vehicles. If you are an SMB, then you probably want the CORE package as stated earlier, or even other competitors such as Avrios and Zubie for your fleet management needs. If you need something with a bit more power, however, then it's worth getting in touch with Chevin Fleet Solutions' sales team and getting a custom pricing quote for your business.

Usability and Interface

When you log in to the solution, the first thing you'll see is your dashboard. This is where you can view all of the information you want to see in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs). Here, you can adjust different windows and see charts about things such as the fleet size of all your departments, your maintenance costs per month, the status of your fleets, and which of your vehicles gets the worst miles per gallon (MPG). You have a wide range of options when it comes to customizing your dashboard. Want the maintenance chart to be a bar graph instead of a pie chart? Just click the Gear icon in the dashboard window. You can also easily change the height and width of a window on the dashboard.

When you first purchase a license for Chevin FleetWave, company reps will work with you to configure the dashboard as you see fit. You can change the widgets yourself if you're comfortable linking the data sources and configuring window dimensions. Its lack of drag-and-drop functionality suggests to us that this work was meant for Chevin FleetWave developers, not users.

Outside of the dashboard, the user interface (UI) is about as smooth and intuitive as it can be, considering all of the information that it is trying to handle. No matter what Chevin FleetWave package you use, you'll see sidebar menu items for Accidents, Account, Drivers, Favorites, Fuel, History, Import/Export, Reports, System, Utilities, Vehicle Expenses, Vehicles, and Work Orders. The majority of these are pretty self-explanatory. After all, if you want to look up information pertaining to a recent accident, then it's obvious that the Accidents menu is the place for you.

We had little trouble using the demo account that the company provided us. The UI is clean considering the amount of information on the screen, and everything is presented with attractive, modern fonts. Adding an entity to the solution, whether a vehicle, driver, or work order, is done simply by clicking the Plus icon at the top of the screen. Want to delete something? Just click the X icon next to it.

With that in mind, there are a few quirks that we didn't quite understand in Chevin FleetWave's design. First, you log out by clicking a Power icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen. We don't understand why Chevin went with a power symbol. After all, you're not turning a machine off, but rather, just logging out. Also, navigation arrows for going to the next and previous page look like audio player controls.

These might sound like nitpicks, but we as humans have been using these tech symbols for decades and use them to understand the products we enjoy. After all, if you were driving a car in the United States and you saw a stop sign that was a yellow triangle instead of an eight-sided red sign, then you'd probably be needlessly confused. We wish the company would update these icons with a more conventional design.

Smart Management

The Vehicles menu is where you'll find all of the information on the cars and trucks in your fleet as well as their status. The first thing you see when you click the module is a list of all your vehicles, along with the vehicles' make, model, odometer, next scheduled service date, and total cost. From there, you can play around with the submenus on which you can create and edit vehicle data.

The Managing Drivers menu works in a similar fashion. This menu will show you all of your drivers' names, driver status (active or inactive), and start date. Plus it will show you an alert if they have a medical or eye test due soon. You can filter both of these lists by the type of data for which you are looking, and it was pretty easy to search for the information we wanted. Being able to pull up information about a driver or vehicle quickly is necessary for any good fleet management platform, and Chevin FleetWave accomplishes this just fine.

Other modules, such as Accident History, Fuel, and Vehicle Expenses all work in concert to help you understand how much your fleet is costing you and how to improve your overall operations. Once all of this data is entered into the system, you can view total expenses in the Vehicle Expenses module. Understanding this sort of data is crucial to running an effective fleet; this feature will be sure to help you better run your staff.

Adding data was fairly easy, too. From any given module, you can click the Plus icon and then you enter forms of information about the topic at hand, whether that's a vehicle, a driver, or a fuel log entry. When we tried to add a car to the system, we were asked to enter information such as the vehicle's make, model, and vehicle identification number (VIN). It was as easy as you'd expect from a modern fleet management platform.

One nice feature is that Chevin FleetWave syncs daily with data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This means, every day Chevin FleetWave will check NHTSA's data for any new information on vehicle safety recalls, and then alert you if one of the cars or trucks in your fleet has a potentially dangerous problem. Having this information sent automatically to the system is helpful for keeping your vehicles in proper shape, and its something we haven't seen in the competition.

Unfortunately, the CORE package's feature set offers nothing in the way of a map view of your vehicles currently in the fleet. Competitors such as Onfleet and Teletrac Navman Director let you see your vehicles out in the field in real time. Chevin Fleet Solutions says it can build custom features for customers, so it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the company could create a map view module for you at an extra cost. Still, it's disappointing that such functionality does not come available out of the box. We'd like to see it incorporated into the solution in the future.

A Solid Fleet Management Platform

Chevin FleetWave offers most of the features you would want in a fleet management software solution. It's easy to use, offers you a view of all of your vehicles and drivers, and gives you vital information to better run your fleet.

It's not without its problems, however. Its vague pricing structure makes it difficult to determine its affordability. Adding data could also be a bit easier. There are also some odd design decisions that went into the platform. Simply put, it falls short when compared to Editors' Choice pick Fleetio. With that in mind, it's still worth considering, especially if you're a larger company that can afford the extra functionality for a more tailor-fit solution.

Chevin FleetWave

Bottom Line: Fleet management software Chevin FleetWave has just about everything you'd need to better understand and manage your fleet. Other vendors are more easily able to tell you how much their products' cost, however.

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About the Author

Rob Watts is PCMag's Business Analyst, writing reviews and features for a variety of business applications. He brings years of experience in editorial insights to the role, having previously worked as an editor for Keypoint Intelligence, an independent test laboratory for document imaging hardware and software. He spends his free time cooking and gaming. See Full Bio